Drive On
by SlvrSoleAlchmst1
Summary: Some shounen ai: Matt x Mello. They take a motorcycle drive, and Matt isn't sure he's happy with his decision to follow Mello and abandon his own life. Eventually though, he realizes that he's simply got to keep moving forward.


_A/N: All the stress from trying to get myself situated while studying abroad in London… I totally needed this._

They drove to Canada in the snow.

Motorcycle wheels weren't the most reliable of things on slush-coated pavement, but Matt didn't give a shit and they drove there anyway. There wasn't any ice on the asphalt – it was the soggy, heavy kind of snow - but it god damned felt like the arctic. Matt shivered in gusts of freezing wind whenever Mello picked up speed. Ice shards of everything he was leaving behind peppered his face like the Devil's little pinpricks. _Drive on_, said ol' Lucifer, poking Matt's face to get his numb body to respond. _Drive on and don't look back._

He didn't care, if he really thought about it. Canada, the United States, Japan… Did any of it matter? Nothing in his life was ever permanent, so who was he to argue?

Matt squinted behind his goggles.

...Fuck it, he did care.

"Mello, stop the damn bike," he said.

It took them ten more minutes to hit a rest stop. The motorcycle got jammed in a ripple of snow as they were pulling in – the leftover ridge deposited by a passing snowplow. Matt had to get off and push, seeking traction for his boots in the tread of the plow's tires. Some other driver rolled his window down and cursed them for blocking the entryway. Matt hollered at him to fuck off and get back on the highway. The guy could drive his cozy, heated SUV to another rest stop.

When his nose was red raw and his gloved hands were stiffened into the immovable shape of the bike's handlebars, Mello killed the engine, dismounted, and kicked the vehicle spitefully.

"Piece of shit," he said, while Matt took note of the snowflakes that clung to his blonde hair. "What the fuck did you ask me to stop for? We're going to get stuck again on the way out. That's if the thing doesn't freeze to the ground right here."

Matt flexed his fingers. He didn't look at Mello. He didn't look at anything, just tilted his head toward the sky and let his vision blur and dance with the pattern of the falling snow.

"I'm fucking talking to you," Mello snarled, and Matt knew his hand was reaching for his gun.

He gave Mello the finger, as best he could with his brittle digits. "Driving to Canada was a bullshit idea," he announced. Mello growled dangerously, taking offense at his crude hand gesture. Matt reached into his pocket next. If he could manage to flip Mello off, maybe he could manage to light a cigarette.

"You agreed to everything," Mello growled, and Matt wanted to deliver him a backhand to the face.

The Zippo came out of his pocket, frosted over with cold. Matt wondered if the temperature had dropped since they'd left. A snowflake landed on his cheek; it was small and hard, not like the fat, soft flakes that had been falling earlier. He flipped open his frosty lighter to test it. One flick. Two. The damn thing wouldn't light. That or his fingers were too _useless_ to light it.

"Let me," Mello volunteered, very nearly softly, and Matt had to pause. He didn't want to look Mello in the eyes, so he focused on the crusted snow and mud that had fused to his boots. Mello's voice had breached the anger and relaxed into what was almost _caring_. What sucked was that Matt knew it was probably all bullshit.

He tossed Mello his lighter.

Mello caught it deftly in one hand. His gloves were already off, and he leaned in as Matt stuck a cigarette into his mouth and savored the taste.

One flick of Mello's finger and a flame leapt from the Zippo's bowels. Matt succumbed to the hand that Mello placed on his shoulder to pull him in and keep him still. He watched Mello's expression, scrunched in what was either concentration or the desire to stave off the unrelenting snow. As if puckering his entire face would prevent frostbite. Matt took a heavy drag, admiring Mello's beauty even while he cursed their situation. It was a giant clusterfuck. He wanted to get the hell out.

"You hate me right now," Mello observed shrewdly, and Matt only gave a dry laugh through his exhaled smoke. The snowflakes melted when the gray cloud devoured them.

"If you didn't want to fucking leave, Matt, then you should have said something, instead of moping around like the stupid fuck you are and fucking up our trip." Mello's voice was back to boiling. Matt wondered if the snow by his feet would thaw into a puddle at the heat of his ire.

"I've never had a cigarette in the snow before," Matt answered foggily. "I grew up in a state where we didn't have real winter…"

Mello took a long moment to respond. A trailer truck rumbled into the rest area with a squeak from its brakes. "Matt—" Mello's voice cracked finally "—you know I wasn't trying to mess with your whole perfect set up back there. We needed to move, that's all. And you told me you'd do it."

Matt's cigarette had receded to the filter. He liked the tiny glow of warmth in the cold, but he tossed it away and watched it fizzle out in the slush. Mello stood rooted to the ground, watching him through narrowed eyes like some feral snow leopard, so Matt faced him and lifted a hand to touch his blonde hair.

"You don't give a _damn_ what I thought back there," he contradicted. Mello didn't flinch, though Matt monitored him for signs of emotion. He took a step closer, burying his fingers fully in Mello's soggy locks and drawing him close.

He bit Mello's ear.

Mello melted into him – marshmallow dissolving in hot chocolate – and Matt used his other hand to tug Mello forward by the hip. He pressed them together, feeling Mello submit further as he moved his chapped and frozen lips to Mello's neck below the ear. Mello's skin was colder than death, gooseflesh like sandpaper down to the line of his collarbone. Matt sucked and massaged with his tongue until he heard Mello release a choked noise of pleasure.

"Matt, why here? What the hell are you— Ahh!" Mello's hands tightened on Matt's jacket, trembling. Matt slid a hand past the waistband of Mello's chilly leather. He knew his cold fingers would cause a burning sensation on the skin there, courtesy of the difference in temperature. As expected, Mello writhed.

Matt pulled back. Mello's face was flushed more deeply than it had been from the weather alone.

"Fuck you for stopping," Mello cursed, but he didn't move forward for more. Matt supposed his stance was warning against it. "What the hell is the matter with you?" he asked next.

"You're a real bitch, Mello," was all Matt replied, fetching himself another cigarette and lighting it on his own this time.

He never got to take a drag. Mello punched him in the face.

Matt brought a hand to his throbbing jaw and felt it to make sure that it was still in place. "Nothing like proving my point on cue," he delivered, and Mello lashed out again.

This time, Matt watched his own blood spatter a line of inverted Braille on the snow. His head whirled; he could hardly see the pattern when he tried to straighten. With an ironic snicker that made Mello screech a threat of psychotic proportions, he hoped it read something like, "My name is Mello and I'm the world's biggest fucktard."

His collar was seized with the brute force of fury. "Fuck you, Matt," Mello yelled hoarsely into his face. "I don't fucking understand you at all! You said you'd stick by me, so who gives a shit whether you had to leave your stupid life behind? What the hell _else_ are we supposed to do?"

Matt tasted blood on his tongue, tinny and metallic like the roomful of computer equipment that he kept humming day and night in his apartment. Gone now, all of it. Shipped out somewhere else, somewhere that Mello wouldn't yet disclose, the same way Canada was just an excuse. An excuse to take a trip somewhere before they left for good, part of the wild chase that was hunting down Kira. One insane hurrah, before they had to buckle down and keep moving, _forever_ this time, with no place to call home and nowhere to park their asses. It'd be too dangerous to stay in one place, Mello had said.

"Hey," Matt remembered Mello saying, not one week after the blonde had shown up out of nowhere to bang down his door, "Let's take a trip to Canada." Mello had grinned like a demon Cheshire cat and snapped off a chunk of his chocolate. "Everything's actually legal for us there."

"Since when have you cared whether things are _legal?_" Matt had asked, fingers pumping like mad over the keys of whatever handheld game he'd been trying to beat at the time. "I heard you took up with the mafia not long ago. And what the hell's in Canada that you can't do here? You mean like going into bars and stuff?" Mello hadn't answered him. "You want alcohol, man, I can get it for you through my contacts."

Mello had stared at him for a long time – Matt remembered the heat of his gaze while his game bleeped and flashed. "We're supposed to be the good guys, Matt," he'd said after a while.

_The good guys._ Matt swiped a glove across his mouth, and the blood came off a swath of crimson on the black, worn out leather. "I still think you're full of shit, Mello. Why are we even here? What else aren't you telling me? If you think I tagged along because I believed your stupid story about Canada being a break, you're trusting gypsies." He hefted his goggles. The snow was congealing on the front of the lenses. "I agreed to come, even though I knew I'd never see my place again. Even though it took me years with a shit job to set that place up after I walked out of Wammy's. But you still won't tell me what the fuck we're in for. We gonna die or something? Is that it? Afraid if I know the risks I'll turn around and sell your whereabouts to get my apartment back when I cop out?"

The snow dropped in silence, gravity pulling it down fast like a hungry magnet. Mello made a growling noise, deep in the back of his throat, but Matt stared him down.

"Let me ask you something, Matt," Mello said, after the headlights of a passing car were done washing them in yellow light. "If you knew you felt so angry from the start, why did you come with me at all?"

"I was bored," Matt said.

"You're lying." Mello took three lightning steps forward and seized him by the back of the neck.

He crashed their lips together, hard and desperate. Matt remained motionless, but Mello implored him with teeth, tongue, and grunts of satisfaction. His hand fisted in Matt's red hair; his body left little space for an escape route. Matt was addicted to Mello's taste, Mello's slender figure pressing urgently against his, Mello's hair brushing his cheek. He gave in. He kissed Mello back, a sensation like vertigo off cheap vodka careening to his core and making him sway on his feet. He groaned with longing, and Mello responded. He kissed Matt more vehemently, raking his hands all over Matt's body as if to claim possession.

"Matt," he murmured, breaking the kiss only to repeat Matt's name twice more, "Matt, _Matt_ — I wouldn't fucking do this to you if I didn't think I had to."

"You don't mean that, Mello, and you never will, so don't keep making shit up." Matt struggled for breath; Mello made a warm contrast with the chill of the snowy outdoors, and it stimulated a tingling somewhere below his stomach. "Fuck. Mello… The truth is I'm here because I couldn't leave if I tried." Mello nuzzled his neck and then bit down hard to draw blood. The move elicited a sharp gasp.

"Then shut up and trust me."

The snow muted all but the crunch of tires on snow as vehicles pulled in and out of the rest stop. At last, Mello relented and moved back toward the motorcycle. "Let's go," he ordered. "We have a job to do." Then he paused. "We're going from here to Vancouver, and from there we'll take a plane to the next destination. We had to take the long way around to cover our tracks. That's all I can tell you for now."

Matt readjusted his goggles and flexed his fingers inside his gloves, trying his best to suppress his astonishment. "Start the engine," he responded, preparing to help push the motorcycle back out onto the highway. Mello's voice reverberated in his head. _We're supposed to be the good guys_.

They zoomed back onto the road in a spray of gritty slush. Canada was a hell of a place in the dead of winter, Matt decided darkly. He didn't know where they were going. Didn't know if Mello would ever open up again and give him any information. Matt held on to Mello tighter as they changed lanes. Maybe _he'd_ simply have to be the one throwing punches next time.

Either way, he wasn't allowed to look back. He couldn't.

_Drive on_, said ol' Lucifer, and Matt nodded in reply. Life was too short to go having regrets. Life was too crazy to try to change what was already done. It didn't matter who was good and who was bad, because every man met the same fate in the end. The only real concern was how you got there, so he might as well tag along for the ride.

They drove through Canada in the snow.


End file.
